Favourite covers from The Face

I took half an hour out of my (not so) hectic schedule earlier this week to listen to Radio 4’s documentary on The Face. You can listen again here for six days and I definitely recommend that you do because it’s an interesting listen. A lot of it covered ground that I’d done at uni as part of various projects on style ~tribes~ but there are some great interviewees and talking heads and what with the current obsession with zines and indie publishing, it served as a timely reminder of how groundbreaking The Face was.

As I was born in 1984, I’m a bit young to have lived through the golden years of the mag, but I guess I started buying it in the early 90s when I wanted something a bit beefier than Melody Maker to accompany me on a car journey. I know most people thought it was pretty much over by then but whatevs, I’d rather have been reading that than Select, right? I have a huge stash of them under the bed at my mum’s house which ideally I will transport to London at some point when I have a vehicle to call my own… I spent ages today looking through old Face scans so here you go with some of my most memorable ones;

March 2000

September 2000

I think we all remember this issue… My copy of this one is actually in London and the spine is completely cracked from me photocopying the life out of it at uni/college. So many great editorials, ah happy days.

July 1997

Eternal? Dale Winton?? Cast??? Who cares, it has Uma and if you’d just been to see her as Poison Ivy in your shell suit at Crystal Peaks Multiplex, you’d have loved it too. How BOT is her hair and makeup??

July 2000

Let’s talk for a minute about how great Chloe looks with a crop. I thought this was Robyn on my first glance!

Kate Moss

Man, how hard did I try to get this hairstyle.

April 2001

August 1999

This is one of my absolute favourite ever covers. At this age all I wanted in life was an X Girl/Hysteric Glamour/Stussy t-shirt but Sheffield didn’t offer such goods and on my trips to Afflecks Palace I was way too intimidated to even think about going in the shops that probably would have had them. Love the hair and makeup now and HOW NICE is it to see happy girls on the cover of a magazine?

October 1980

Here’s a selection of my favourite editorials… I could happily have gone on for pages.

Uh-mazing. She looks about 10!

These horns are like… amaze.

I’ve got a photocopy of this on my wall that has followed me around since… whenever this issue came out.

Post navigation

6 thoughts on “Favourite covers from The Face”

Ohhh The Face. It was the basis of my dissertation! And dreams came true when I had a tiny mugshot in one issue.

The Luis Sanchis has followed me round many walls too, it’s still basically my ideal of dressing (I don’t relish having to grow out of it). The smiling girls cover also reminds me of the J17 covers of that era and all my teen dreams.

The one you have the photocopy of is from the January 2003 issue! I know this because I’ve still got it in the cellar – my fave issue although probably only because Craig Nicholls, who I fancied at the time, was on the cover and said cover was a staple of my university poster collection. It used to really piss me off half the time, but I really miss The Face, there’s been nothing to replace it since!

Yeah sometimes they were too smug for their own good but it was still a top read and made me feel so cool to buy it as a teenager. We had a really good chat at work today about all those mags — remember Sleazenation? So Nathan Barley lookingback but it was great!

Oh I loved it too! I might have to go and dig my old issues out now. They’re from the late nineties/early noughties but still so good. All the magazines I loved as a yoof died. The Face, Smash Hits, J17… RIP :*(

Smash Hits was so proper good in the 90s. Remember the A-Z of Indie they had every week? That was amazing. I also bought a Smash Hits Indie Summer Special which became my bible. How I wanted to visit the Good Mixer 😦